Department for Energy Security and Net Zero

Energy Efficiency Update

Lord Callanan: Today the Government is announcing £1.8bn of funding to cut the emissions and boost the energy efficiency of homes and public buildings across England. The investment will further reduce energy bills for householders and businesses, as part of the Prime Minister’s pledge to halve inflation and ease the cost of living. Altogether, 115,000 homes will benefit from energy efficiency and low carbon heating upgrades, along with 144 public sector organisations responsible for hospitals, schools, leisure centres, museums, universities and other buildings. It is being delivered through the Home Upgrade Grant (HUG), Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF) and Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS). In 2019, the UK became the first major economy in the world to legally commit to end our contribution to global warming by 2050. This is a huge challenge. But it is also an unprecedented opportunity. The UK has already shown that environmental action can go hand-in-hand with economic success, having grown our economy by more than three-quarters while cutting emissions by over 40% since 1990. The effort will be shared across many sectors, and decarbonising the energy used in buildings, and increasing energy efficiency will be a vital component. The UK is home to around 30 million buildings which are responsible for 31% of UK emissions. We have some of the oldest housing stock in Europe, over 80% of buildings still rely on high carbon fossil fuels for heating and have low levels of thermal efficiency. To reach our net zero target by 2050 we need to decarbonise the way we heat and cool our homes and workplaces, and to ensure that in the near term we meet our fuel poverty targets and emissions reduction targets. This £1.8bn investment will be critical in supporting our commitment made in 2022 to reduce the UK’s final energy consumption from buildings and industry by 15% by 2030 against 2021 levels. The Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund and Home Upgrade Grant Through the SHDF Wave 2.1 and HUG 2 the Government are awarding a significant injection of funding worth £1.4 billion to local authorities and providers of social housing. An additional £1.1 billion in match funding for social housing is being provided by local authorities and providers of social housing, bringing the total investment to £2.5 billion to upgrade social and private homes in England. The grant funding will be invested from April 2023 to March 2025, although delivery on the SHDF can continue with the use of match funding until September 2025. The money will go towards improvements to social households and private, low income, off-gas grid households with an EPC rating of D or below and could save homes occupants between £220 and £400 a year on energy bills. Energy cutting and cost saving measures provided through the schemes include external wall insulation, cavity wall insulation, loft insulation, new windows and doors and draft proofing measures, as well as heat pumps and solar panel installation. These schemes will also support around 20,000 jobs in the construction and home retrofit sectors, helping to deliver on our promise to grow the economy and create better paid jobs, whilst supporting families across the country. The funding awarded through these schemes continues the investment through “Help to Heat” Schemes which has already seen: Over £240 million already awarded to the SHDF Demonstrator and SHFD Wave 1 projects, indicating the Governments continued support to the £3.8 billion manifesto commitment between now and 2030 to deliver energy efficiency improvements in social housing. Over 37,000 households have seen energy efficiency upgrades as part of the first two phases of the Local Authority Delivery scheme, with a further 20,000-28,000 homes expected as part of the Sustainable Warmth Competition. In addition to the SHDF and HUG, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero will also use ECO4 and ECO+ to accelerate our efforts to improve homes to meet fuel poverty targets and the Government has committed to a four-year, £4 billion extension and expansion of ECO with ECO4. We have announced a further £1 billon extension of the scheme through ECO+ to start in Spring 2023. Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme Over £409 million of grant funding has also been awarded through the Government’s Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme. This Phase 3b of the scheme will support 144 public sector organisations across 171 projects to undertake low carbon heating and energy efficiency measures across hundreds of buildings. These projects will not only help reduce the carbon emissions of these public buildings but save them money on their energy bills and ultimately, save the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds in the long-term. Hospitals, schools, leisure centres, universities and other vital public service buildings across England are set to benefit from the scheme. £2 billion has now been awarded across over 900 projects to decarbonise the public sector across all phases of the scheme to date, and even more funding through Phase 3b is to come as applications are assessed and approved. Today’s £409 million is part of the wider £2.5 billion package that this government has committed to spending on upgrading public sector buildings between 2020 and 2025, supporting this government’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions from public sector buildings by 75% by 2037. Funding through the schemes will be allocated across England based on the following allocations: RegionPSDSHUGSHDFEast Midlands£18,112,366£3,291,300**£ 74,715,671East of England£14,677,719£23,577,300£83,628,477London£44,280,137£12,006,000£131,724,938North East£7,636,389£28,576,000£29,355,551North West£44,555,899£83,885,000£105,371,309South East£108,324,556£161,237,898£128,906,218South West£33,450,968£77,514,032£ 80,236,981West Midlands£88,371,731£152,745,310£93,593,216Yorkshire and the Humber£21,737,561£41,144,920£ 50,053,929Across regions£26,688,898--Scotland*£1,221,871--  * The Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme was open to applications from public sector bodies in England and areas of reserved public services across the UK.** Further funding is available to the region via the Midlands Net Zero Hub which represents £138m of grant funding across the Midlands The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has also partnered with the Energy Systems Catapult to launch a freely accessible suite of tools, templates, and guidance to support the public sector in further decarbonising their sites. This support will help public sector bodies through the entire decarbonisation lifecycle, from the first stages of developing a strategy, through funding, installation, and completion, to help make achieving net zero sites and energy savings simpler. Energy Efficiency Taskforce The Government has launched an Energy Efficiency Taskforce to support a step change in the reduction of energy demand through accelerated delivery of energy efficiency across the economy. It will help to support the Government’s ambition to reduce total UK energy demand by 15% from 2021 levels by 2030 across domestic and commercial buildings and industrial processes. Future Funding £6 billion of new Government funding will be made available from 2025 to 2028, in addition to the £6.6 billion allocated in this Parliament. This provides long-term funding certainty, supporting the growth of supply chains, and ensuring we can scale up our delivery over time.

Department for Business and Trade

Trade Update: UK-Gulf Cooperation Council FTA

Lord Johnson of Lainston: My Hon Friend the Minister for International Trade (Nigel Huddleston MP) has today made the following statement.The third round of negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA) between the UK and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) took place between 12 and 16 March.The round was hosted by GCC in Riyadh and held in a hybrid fashion. A number of UK negotiators from across the Government travelled to Riyadh for in-person discussions and others attended virtually.Draft treaty text was advanced across the majority of chapters. Technical discussions were held across 13 policy areas over 30 sessions. Good progress was made and both sides remain committed to securing an ambitious, comprehensive and modern agreement fit for the 21st century.An FTA will be a substantial economic opportunity and a significant moment in the UK-GCC relationship. Government analysis shows that, in the long run, a deal with the GCC is expected to increase trade by at least 16%, add at least £1.6 billion a year to the UK economy and contribute an additional £600 million or more to UK.The fourth round of negotiations is expected to be hosted by the UK later this year.His Majesty’s Government remains clear that any deal we sign will be in the best interests of the British people and the United Kingdom economy. We will not compromise on our high environmental, public health, animal welfare and food standards, and we will maintain our right to regulate in the public interest. We are also clear that during these negotiations, the National Health Service and the services it provides is not on the table.

Department of Health and Social Care

Cyber Security Strategy

Lord Markham: I am pleased to announce the publication of the Cyber Security Strategy for Health and Adult Social Care to 2030. The strategy sets out a vision to 2030 for a health and social care sector that is resilient to cyber attack. It establishes cyber security as a foundational business need to ensuring patient and service user safety. Improved cyber resilience will assure availability of services, protect valuable data, enable quicker response and recovery when attacks do occur, and increase public trust.The health and social care sector has made good progress in recent years, by making use of the increasing cyber defence and response mechanisms at its disposal, with the sector now much better protected from untargeted attack than it was at the time of the WannaCry cyber attack in 2017. However, we still have further to go. This strategy will shape a common purpose and an approach that will be applicable across health and social care systems including for adult social care, primary care, and our critical supply chain as well as for secondary care.Digital transformation offers huge opportunities for the sector and building cyber security into our design will be essential as we put the right technology and controls in place to realise those benefits. The five pillars in our strategy, developed collaboratively across the health and care sector, focus our approach on the most important risks to our most critical systems, while growing our cyber workforce so that we can better tackle threats in the long-term. The strategy will be supported by a national implementation plan in Summer 2023 which will detail activities and define metrics to build and measure resilience over the next two to three years.

Cabinet Office

Launch of the Consultation on the Effectiveness of the Digital Economy Act 2017 Debt and Fraud Powers

Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Minister Burghart and I are pleased to announce the launch of a consultation on the effectiveness of the Digital Economy Act 2017 Debt and Fraud Powers.The Debt and Fraud Powers, as contained in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 respectively, allow specified public authorities to disclose information for the purpose of managing and reducing debt owed to a public authority or to the Crown and combating fraud against the Public Sector.These Powers must be reviewed, three years after their operation, for the purpose of deciding whether they should be retained, amended or repealed. As part of this Review, I am required to consult certain persons and publish a report on the Review’s outcomes.As part of this consultation, I shall engage with:the Information Commissioner,the Scottish Ministers,the Welsh Ministers,the Department of Finance in Northern Ireland,members of the Home Affairs Committee,bodies which have used the Debt and Fraud Powers of the Digital Economy Act 2017 andmembers of the Digital Economy Act Debt and Fraud Information Sharing Review Board.The Consultation is now open and will last for a period of six weeks ending on 27th April 2023.

Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

The UK's International Technology Strategy

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon: My Right Honourable Friend, the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (James Cleverly), has made the following Written Ministerial Statement:This is a joint statement with the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology.Today we have laid before the House the UK’s International Technology Strategy. Technological advances bring huge opportunities for our economies and societies and how we collaborate internationally will be critical to realising the benefits of these.The competition between authoritarian and liberal values will define how technologies shape our future. The Integrated Review Refresh 2023 reiterated the central role of technology in driving growth and ensuring the security of the British people. This strategy sets out how we will work internationally to increase the UK’s strategic advantage in technology, using that advantage to drive economic growth, protect our citizens’ security and ensure our values of freedom and democracy thrive.The International Technology Strategy is a cross-government strategy. It underpins how we deliver internationally the vision set out in the UK Science and Technology Framework.The strategy defines a set of principles to shape our engagement on technologies internationally - open, responsible, secure, and resilient. It sets out a framework for delivering an ambitious vision and championing our principles on the international stage. Our approach will be guided by six strategic priorities:Priority technologies and data: artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, engineering biology, semiconductors, and telecommunications, alongside data as a key underpinning enabler of all technologies. We will build strategic advantage in these areas to ensure the UK is world-leading and that they develop in line with our values.International partnerships for global leadership: working closely with governments, academia, and industry to support our shared growth and address global challenges.Values-based governance and regulation: promoting our principles and vision for a future technology order that benefits all by working with partners and through international fora to shape technology governance.Technology investment and expertise for the developing world: building capacity to bridge the technology divide and support partners to make informed choices.Technology to drive the UK economy: continuing to drive UK technology exports and promote the UK as the best place for technology companies to raise capital and attract foreign direct investment.Protecting our security interests: ensuring sensitive technology does not fall into hostile hands and that we retain critical technology capabilities in the UK.To realise the ambition of this strategy, we will bolster our capabilities across the UK’s overseas network so the right skills and expertise can be deployed. This will include increasing the number of Tech Envoys, increasing technology expertise across our global network, and uplifting the capability of our diplomats through training, secondments, and recruitment.A copy of the Strategy has been placed in the Libraries of both Houses and is available on gov.uk.